Victor & Yvette
Aug. 12th, 2009 04:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shankieOriginal Fiction this is!
There's this tabletop RPG system called Burning Wheel, see, and Victor Crowley, Viscount of Daventry, is my character. This story is a part of fleshing out the character of the NPC Yvette Astor, my fiancee`, and so a bit of a writing exercise you can be free to ignore as you please, unless gender play, the British Navy, lesbians, and such things are just concept that you can't scroll past and ignore. Yes, place names are from either fiction (Daventry? Get it? Hur hur) or real life all mixed up. Liking Hornblower too much ain't a crime, man.
Victor & Yvette
I have no memory of the moment I first met Lady Yvette Astor, Countess of Kinara. She had always been there in my life, from earliest memory as a familiar and beloved figure. I am told she was not even a year old, and we met the day that it was decided I, the heir of Daventry, and her, the only child of a widowed Earl of Kinara, would be married to secure the future of the County against the Crown appointing another family to its stewardship. I am told I gave her a rose stolen from parlor, and she, much to my amusement, ate it petal by petal. A story Mother always did enjoyed telling to her guests.
While our houses were not close, Father would summer in Kinara’s countryside every year. He felt it was best I spent such time away from Mother’s feminine influence, teaching me to grow up a man’s man and worthy heir to the generations of Crowleys that had served the Crown as generals and stewards. I would hunt in early morning, fence in the afternoons, and read up on my knowledge of history at night as he read lurid or fantastic (I always thought) accounts from the New World and other places of the Empire’s long-reaching expansion in his study. While it may have been a distraction from such efforts, to spurn the Earl’s desire for Yvette and I to grow closer would have been a dangerous insult; and so many of my days were interrupted of all this to entertain her with Draughts or enable her desire for most unladylike behaviours climbing trees or playing pirates with wooden swords.
In Daventry I was educated at home by dour old men, raised by dour old nursemaids, and not allowed much contact with anyone else; Yvette was the only friend I had. I cannot say at such a young age, in such formative years, what I felt was truly love; but I can know well that contact with all others was the formation of the great lie of my very existence. The only truth was with her.
Perhaps a year before I was sent off to serve as Midshipman aboard The Mermaid, still a child, Yvette had decided with great certainty I could not argue with (as I could never much argue with her desires) she would go swimming in a small pond on her father’s estate and I would join her. She left her clothes on the bank and rushed in, teasing me mercilessly as I stood there and could offer up no good reason I was determined to stay in my trousers.
Being a child, I did not understand the dangers of giving in to her fully, and so I did. It was then she learned I was a boy everywhere but under my clothes and deep in a mind that more intrigued by dresses and needlepoint than the rigors of education and combat thrust upon me. I knew enough to swear with her, as children do, to a solemn vow of secrecy unimaginable to break for an eternity of life. We made a blood oath in the water, though it was little more than scrapes it was considered with the upmost sincerity. She has always kept her promises; that and others.
I told Father in joy that I at long last could speak to a peer in truth, an act that I learned a mistake. That summer ended early for me, followed by an autumn and winter of isolation that was unforgiving in teaching me to never be so generous with myself. My duty to the family was this lie, all else was secondary.
It was only the request of the Earl that allowed us to spend the summer of my eighth year with her, a year that became test upon test of how well I could conceal my body’s truth. Lessons in history were replaced with those in being A Man, every day with a lecture on the great shame that would curse my family for generations if I were to ever be so weak again.
Before my ninth birthday I was given the opportunity to say my goodbyes to Yvette. Neither of us fully understood how far we would be separated, for how long. I was given a blue and white uniform with brass buttons and began the life in the Royal Navy.
Hiding my nature there was not so difficult as one might imagine; as a noble son in training to become an officer, certain privacies were allowed. I was known as eccentrically shy about my body to others, but to be aboard such a vessel is learn all men are odd in their own way. History lessons were replaced with navigation, algebraic formulae and other mathematics, the running of a ship, and the ability to command. It was the last thing I excelled in, being over the years the youngest Midshipman to routinely dress down crew and men decades my senior with capability. My quirk of secrecy was easily forgiven and forgotten as the Captain came to believe I had a future as an officer aboard a warbird and had some measure of preferential treatment to give.
I grew up then on groomed to combat and leadership; only after passing my exams in London to become an officer, and summarily receiving orders to The Indefatigable, did I see Yvette again.
I spent Christmas in Daventry, Mother and Father smothering me with pride, to take advantage of the first leave of any decent length I’d had in many years. Mother and Father, other family, the servants, all of them were like strangers with some resemblance to memory. The formality of their house was not like the formality of the service I had grown accustomed to, leaving me to feel very much a fish out of water and struggling to hide how I began to suffocate.
Yvette was fifteen then, my first sight of her an image burned forever to my mind. She’d worn her hair in loose gold curls over her shoulders, her face the shape of a heart, her skin glowing in candlelight as she looked at me with her dark eyes as a mysterious stranger. I’d long been binding my breasts with lengths of linen under the uniform (the only thing I had worn in years) but hers were full in the womanhood my lovely Yvette had grown into with delicate grace. When I say I felt jealousy, do not think it a petty thing; I felt a rough mortal in the presence of the Angelic, with an awe and feeling that encompasses so many thoughts I could not help but wish to be like her. More deeply, however, I wished to be with her an eternity.
I flushed and stuttered in her presence.
We spent perhaps a week of awkward and formal companionship before we spent a night of awkward, unbelievable lovemaking that sealed us together like our parents’ agreement could never hope to do. She had not seen all of me since that day at the pond, so I admit it was with fear and dread in equal parts to desire that gave myself to her then, by my darling Yvette seemed to love my body just as much as Mother and Father taught me to despise it.
If I am truly a man, I left her one madly in love when our time was done. She gave me a small painting of her made for just that occasion not long before, sending me back to my service with sweet nothings echoing in my ears, my heart so light it threatened to raise my feet off the earth itself, and a courage that would have allowed me to defeat the Spanish Armada single-handed if it could be made possible.
I kept the portrait and the memory of her dearly close as I learned what it meant to spill blood in the name of the Crown. So many became like the deer and rabbits I had stalked with Father in the fog of early morning; not men at all, merely animals to be conquered with steel and lead, as to die was their fate, and to kill was mine.
I became a beast in love with a distant Angel, horror in what I was wont to do deadening slowly, humanity kept alive by the painted lines of her face.
I returned to Yvette years later, as First Officer aboard a fine warbird of the Navy and myself a hardened predator that toasted death and destruction with the fanciful Peers of the Realm until they were red-faced, drunken messes. I was decorated and respected, meant for great things (or so I was told) but cared naught of ambitions. In the nights and troubled moments of quiet that grew to be like old friends, the only brightness was the knowledge that I had been born and raised to be Yvette’s Earl of Kinara and Daventry, to keep her contented and secure in however she would wish to be Countess and heir.
An arranged marriage is naught but formality until it is sealed in law, a thing I could not do myself as long as I remained a humble servant of the Crown, and our fathers remained hardy and alive. My life was nothing but a safety against the threat of death for our parents; so noble-born men began extending desires to court her as much as my uniform became a part of my skin.
Yvette’s letters, and her journeys to ports so we could have days or hours in times of my leave, began to be laced with her longing to have me at her side. For most of the Aristocracy, I was but a foot-note in relation to Daventry or her. She began to fear the hardening that grew in my eyes on in so much that it may drive me away from caring for her. There were never, and shall never be, the words to properly explain no force of the Crown or God could sever my devotion, but by then of her peers of that age were wed and already bearing children.
The years only taught her more I was to be with her. So it came to pass I gave up my noble career, begging and threatening Father to use his influence to cut short my commission, a thing he has yet to forgive me for doing. She begged me to leave the sea, and I could not deny her.
I went from a respected hunting dog of the Crown to a ruffian, only another sailor drinking my way from coin to coin; I spent more time than I would care to admit sleeping wherever I could find a bit of space until my fists could buy me a bed. I had hardly more than the clothes on my back, not wanting Yvette’s charity, but now I was always so close to her it would be nothing for us to be together. The years and long months of being apart were gone. Without a husband she was merely a daughter with a pittance to spend, without property and money I was no fit husband, but all else we had. I might dress myself up and ride an hour to be with her, whenever I would like; the luxury of it was so great that it was not long any bitterness I felt for her pushing me to this was long behind me. I admitted my feelings and we begged one another’s forgiveness for our own failings, and it was akin to that night we had dispensed with one another’s virginity; we became new again to each other, newly important and loved.
The Earl, thankfully, never pushed her to pursue any of the would-be suitors at his door; if he knew of my life and felt a guilt of fashioning me into something I was not with Father I may never know (nor do I much care) but he allowed Yvette and I to remain promised to one another long after any other noble would seek some other solution beneficial to their own security. I believe Father and Mother remained silent in the fear I would shame them all by revealing the truth of my nature, but we no longer speak in anything but formal and necessary words, and only on rare occasion.
I believe all of the desires I have ever had to be female have since become harvested to other purposes; as judgment against my parents for believing me to be naught but a puppet for their amusement and a test by God to be worthy of His forgiveness when all is said and done. I can be naught what I have been fashioned to be, but if I have my Yvette at my side, I can happily praise the names of all that have brought me to be what I am today.
I am a thug and little better than a charlatan, but my lies are not my own. Yvette loves me still, and I care little of the opinions of others.
There's this tabletop RPG system called Burning Wheel, see, and Victor Crowley, Viscount of Daventry, is my character. This story is a part of fleshing out the character of the NPC Yvette Astor, my fiancee`, and so a bit of a writing exercise you can be free to ignore as you please, unless gender play, the British Navy, lesbians, and such things are just concept that you can't scroll past and ignore. Yes, place names are from either fiction (Daventry? Get it? Hur hur) or real life all mixed up. Liking Hornblower too much ain't a crime, man.
Victor & Yvette
I have no memory of the moment I first met Lady Yvette Astor, Countess of Kinara. She had always been there in my life, from earliest memory as a familiar and beloved figure. I am told she was not even a year old, and we met the day that it was decided I, the heir of Daventry, and her, the only child of a widowed Earl of Kinara, would be married to secure the future of the County against the Crown appointing another family to its stewardship. I am told I gave her a rose stolen from parlor, and she, much to my amusement, ate it petal by petal. A story Mother always did enjoyed telling to her guests.
While our houses were not close, Father would summer in Kinara’s countryside every year. He felt it was best I spent such time away from Mother’s feminine influence, teaching me to grow up a man’s man and worthy heir to the generations of Crowleys that had served the Crown as generals and stewards. I would hunt in early morning, fence in the afternoons, and read up on my knowledge of history at night as he read lurid or fantastic (I always thought) accounts from the New World and other places of the Empire’s long-reaching expansion in his study. While it may have been a distraction from such efforts, to spurn the Earl’s desire for Yvette and I to grow closer would have been a dangerous insult; and so many of my days were interrupted of all this to entertain her with Draughts or enable her desire for most unladylike behaviours climbing trees or playing pirates with wooden swords.
In Daventry I was educated at home by dour old men, raised by dour old nursemaids, and not allowed much contact with anyone else; Yvette was the only friend I had. I cannot say at such a young age, in such formative years, what I felt was truly love; but I can know well that contact with all others was the formation of the great lie of my very existence. The only truth was with her.
Perhaps a year before I was sent off to serve as Midshipman aboard The Mermaid, still a child, Yvette had decided with great certainty I could not argue with (as I could never much argue with her desires) she would go swimming in a small pond on her father’s estate and I would join her. She left her clothes on the bank and rushed in, teasing me mercilessly as I stood there and could offer up no good reason I was determined to stay in my trousers.
Being a child, I did not understand the dangers of giving in to her fully, and so I did. It was then she learned I was a boy everywhere but under my clothes and deep in a mind that more intrigued by dresses and needlepoint than the rigors of education and combat thrust upon me. I knew enough to swear with her, as children do, to a solemn vow of secrecy unimaginable to break for an eternity of life. We made a blood oath in the water, though it was little more than scrapes it was considered with the upmost sincerity. She has always kept her promises; that and others.
I told Father in joy that I at long last could speak to a peer in truth, an act that I learned a mistake. That summer ended early for me, followed by an autumn and winter of isolation that was unforgiving in teaching me to never be so generous with myself. My duty to the family was this lie, all else was secondary.
It was only the request of the Earl that allowed us to spend the summer of my eighth year with her, a year that became test upon test of how well I could conceal my body’s truth. Lessons in history were replaced with those in being A Man, every day with a lecture on the great shame that would curse my family for generations if I were to ever be so weak again.
Before my ninth birthday I was given the opportunity to say my goodbyes to Yvette. Neither of us fully understood how far we would be separated, for how long. I was given a blue and white uniform with brass buttons and began the life in the Royal Navy.
Hiding my nature there was not so difficult as one might imagine; as a noble son in training to become an officer, certain privacies were allowed. I was known as eccentrically shy about my body to others, but to be aboard such a vessel is learn all men are odd in their own way. History lessons were replaced with navigation, algebraic formulae and other mathematics, the running of a ship, and the ability to command. It was the last thing I excelled in, being over the years the youngest Midshipman to routinely dress down crew and men decades my senior with capability. My quirk of secrecy was easily forgiven and forgotten as the Captain came to believe I had a future as an officer aboard a warbird and had some measure of preferential treatment to give.
I grew up then on groomed to combat and leadership; only after passing my exams in London to become an officer, and summarily receiving orders to The Indefatigable, did I see Yvette again.
I spent Christmas in Daventry, Mother and Father smothering me with pride, to take advantage of the first leave of any decent length I’d had in many years. Mother and Father, other family, the servants, all of them were like strangers with some resemblance to memory. The formality of their house was not like the formality of the service I had grown accustomed to, leaving me to feel very much a fish out of water and struggling to hide how I began to suffocate.
Yvette was fifteen then, my first sight of her an image burned forever to my mind. She’d worn her hair in loose gold curls over her shoulders, her face the shape of a heart, her skin glowing in candlelight as she looked at me with her dark eyes as a mysterious stranger. I’d long been binding my breasts with lengths of linen under the uniform (the only thing I had worn in years) but hers were full in the womanhood my lovely Yvette had grown into with delicate grace. When I say I felt jealousy, do not think it a petty thing; I felt a rough mortal in the presence of the Angelic, with an awe and feeling that encompasses so many thoughts I could not help but wish to be like her. More deeply, however, I wished to be with her an eternity.
I flushed and stuttered in her presence.
We spent perhaps a week of awkward and formal companionship before we spent a night of awkward, unbelievable lovemaking that sealed us together like our parents’ agreement could never hope to do. She had not seen all of me since that day at the pond, so I admit it was with fear and dread in equal parts to desire that gave myself to her then, by my darling Yvette seemed to love my body just as much as Mother and Father taught me to despise it.
If I am truly a man, I left her one madly in love when our time was done. She gave me a small painting of her made for just that occasion not long before, sending me back to my service with sweet nothings echoing in my ears, my heart so light it threatened to raise my feet off the earth itself, and a courage that would have allowed me to defeat the Spanish Armada single-handed if it could be made possible.
I kept the portrait and the memory of her dearly close as I learned what it meant to spill blood in the name of the Crown. So many became like the deer and rabbits I had stalked with Father in the fog of early morning; not men at all, merely animals to be conquered with steel and lead, as to die was their fate, and to kill was mine.
I became a beast in love with a distant Angel, horror in what I was wont to do deadening slowly, humanity kept alive by the painted lines of her face.
I returned to Yvette years later, as First Officer aboard a fine warbird of the Navy and myself a hardened predator that toasted death and destruction with the fanciful Peers of the Realm until they were red-faced, drunken messes. I was decorated and respected, meant for great things (or so I was told) but cared naught of ambitions. In the nights and troubled moments of quiet that grew to be like old friends, the only brightness was the knowledge that I had been born and raised to be Yvette’s Earl of Kinara and Daventry, to keep her contented and secure in however she would wish to be Countess and heir.
An arranged marriage is naught but formality until it is sealed in law, a thing I could not do myself as long as I remained a humble servant of the Crown, and our fathers remained hardy and alive. My life was nothing but a safety against the threat of death for our parents; so noble-born men began extending desires to court her as much as my uniform became a part of my skin.
Yvette’s letters, and her journeys to ports so we could have days or hours in times of my leave, began to be laced with her longing to have me at her side. For most of the Aristocracy, I was but a foot-note in relation to Daventry or her. She began to fear the hardening that grew in my eyes on in so much that it may drive me away from caring for her. There were never, and shall never be, the words to properly explain no force of the Crown or God could sever my devotion, but by then of her peers of that age were wed and already bearing children.
The years only taught her more I was to be with her. So it came to pass I gave up my noble career, begging and threatening Father to use his influence to cut short my commission, a thing he has yet to forgive me for doing. She begged me to leave the sea, and I could not deny her.
I went from a respected hunting dog of the Crown to a ruffian, only another sailor drinking my way from coin to coin; I spent more time than I would care to admit sleeping wherever I could find a bit of space until my fists could buy me a bed. I had hardly more than the clothes on my back, not wanting Yvette’s charity, but now I was always so close to her it would be nothing for us to be together. The years and long months of being apart were gone. Without a husband she was merely a daughter with a pittance to spend, without property and money I was no fit husband, but all else we had. I might dress myself up and ride an hour to be with her, whenever I would like; the luxury of it was so great that it was not long any bitterness I felt for her pushing me to this was long behind me. I admitted my feelings and we begged one another’s forgiveness for our own failings, and it was akin to that night we had dispensed with one another’s virginity; we became new again to each other, newly important and loved.
The Earl, thankfully, never pushed her to pursue any of the would-be suitors at his door; if he knew of my life and felt a guilt of fashioning me into something I was not with Father I may never know (nor do I much care) but he allowed Yvette and I to remain promised to one another long after any other noble would seek some other solution beneficial to their own security. I believe Father and Mother remained silent in the fear I would shame them all by revealing the truth of my nature, but we no longer speak in anything but formal and necessary words, and only on rare occasion.
I believe all of the desires I have ever had to be female have since become harvested to other purposes; as judgment against my parents for believing me to be naught but a puppet for their amusement and a test by God to be worthy of His forgiveness when all is said and done. I can be naught what I have been fashioned to be, but if I have my Yvette at my side, I can happily praise the names of all that have brought me to be what I am today.
I am a thug and little better than a charlatan, but my lies are not my own. Yvette loves me still, and I care little of the opinions of others.
no subject
on 2009-08-12 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-12 05:36 pm (UTC)I'm growing absurdly fond of these two. XD
no subject
on 2009-08-18 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-18 09:51 pm (UTC)Thank you, they're like my babies now or something, I luffs them. XD
no subject
on 2009-08-18 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-18 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-18 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-19 04:37 am (UTC)Somethin I gotta share
on 2009-08-23 07:00 pm (UTC)What had me laughing the hardest was this neophyte insisting that Captain Cold should be using cold grenades and regular bullets to hit Flash and that DC would -never- kill The Flash. He repeats this several times despite others telling him he's wacked. I am in hysterics. Comedy Central couldn't have done a better skit.
Had to share with someone who would get the joke. Link below. kyer ;P
http://forums (dot) comicbookresources (dot) com/showthread (dot)php?p=9493754